A Rising Civilian Death Toll on the Afghan-Pakistan Border

The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has just released its report on the State of Human Rights in 2010. The numbers on deaths in the ongoing militant and covert U.S. conflict are not good. The Commission estimates 1,041 civilians were killed in suicide attacks in 2010, 2,542 total. Meanwhile, "US drones strikes were responsible for 957 extra-legal killings." The BBC points out that "the number of people killed by the army is not mentioned, but it estimated to be in the region of 600-700."

The BBC also notes that these numbers "show a rise in the numbers being killed in Pakistan's conflict," as "BBC research published last July suggested 1,713 people had been killed by militants over the preceding 18 months, while 746 people had died in drone attacks during the same period." Though it's a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison, as numbers are hard to verify and these are two different outlets measuring two different, overlapping lengths of time, the increase seems undoubtedly to be a large one. One very crude way of shaking the numbers out would be a monthly average: between January 2009 and July 2010 there was a rough monthly average of 140 deaths in the conflict. Between January 2010 and December 2010, it was a monthly average of 290--more than double the earlier number.